Keith Law talks MLB Draft

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Brought to you by NHTSA. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. This is the Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pelissero.

49ers ultra wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk has officially requested a trade. The outdoors was not a setup, okay? This is literally hit as I'm getting you up on the zoo. Oh no, this could be true. Today's guest, senior baseball writer for the athletic, Keith Law, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, longtime golf writer Alan Shipnuck, professional boxer Shane Mosley. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Welcome to another Rich Eisen-less show. I am Tom Pelissero back in the big chair, especially fired up for so many different reasons today. Not just because I'm here with my boys in the studio. Yep, show some enthusiasm, Brockman.

Just no reaction whatsoever. See what kind of odds he can get on still checking out those catches for Ladd-McConkey. A hundred. A hundred plus, Chase Daniel told us yesterday.

That's aggressive. That would be quite a few. We got so much going on on the show today. We got Keith Law coming on, the nation's foremost expert on the baseball draft, as well as all things major league baseball. We'll talk about the all-star game.

But he also, nobody, nobody dives deeper in that. Some of the guys that you're going to see sooner than later in major league baseball, we'll get into that. Eli Drinkwitz, who against I think all odds in history as a top 10 Missouri team going into the college football season going to be on the show.

The British Open is teeing off tomorrow. Alan Shipnuck will be with us. All right. Talk about that. And Shane Mosley Jr. going to be right here.

All right. He wants a shot at the middleweight title. He said that after his win 11 days ago. So he's 22 and four. Didn't you say you're 155 pounds? Is that middleweight? What, what weight class would you be in, Tom?

That's got to be, I think TJ's our boxing expert here. Is that, are we, it's not fly weight. Cause that's like 120 or something. 155. See, I'm so used to UFC. You are super welterweight.

Yeah. Super welterweight. The difference is, unlike the boxers who come in at the 155 weight class, I'm somehow 20% body fat and still, still a buck 55.

I say this with all due respect. You're skinny fat. Is that what it is? I think that's what it is. I think I've just got a little, yeah. It's like, I've got the correct amount of weight.

It's just not necessarily distributed in the places I would ideally like it. But when you're 43 years old, you just, you step on the scale and you go, ah, dude, I feel you. It's not terrible. I feel you, man. It's not bad. It was like a buck 75 during COVID. We've gotten that thing back down, back down to fighting weight. I've never been in a fight. Ooh. Never in my life.

43 years. Never been in a fight. That's a good thing. I know that like the statistical odds.

That's not true. The statistical odds that I would never be in a fight are so low that I feel like at some point it's going to happen. Not in the bars as much as I used to.

I'm not out till midnight. I mean, you were at the Blink concert the other day. You could, they could have had a fight there. The only fight there was my buddy and his arm against the sidewalk. When he, when he took a dive, I showed TJ yesterday as we were driving, driving into the studio, he went down so hard after that concert. I saw, I was upright.

I was a hero. I said, why don't you stand on the inside now? Not near the curb.

So the both of us make sure that we get home. But I want Shane Mosley Jr. to give me some tips. If I ever, if it happens, which again, statistical odds say, somebody's going to punch me or I'm going to have to punch somebody.

I want to know what to do. Do you want to get into a fight? Is that? Absolutely not.

I've made it this long. Yeah. I'm a pacifist, man. I don't know. I don't see the, the reason for all this violence, but if somebody, somebody steps to me, I got to protect somebody.

I want to be ready. Shane Mosley Jr. in that seat a couple hours from now. It's going to be a Packers fan or a Bears fan that's mad. Well, that's honestly, in my life, that's probably the scenario where I am most likely to get into a physical altercation is trying to exit a stadium after a game. As a Vikings fan, that's what I'm pointing out.

No, that's nothing to do. I'm not a Vikings fan. I grew up in Minnesota. I think we, we, we kind of think of you, I think Minnesota. So if I'm a Packer fan, I'm like, this guy likes the Vikings. They would view me as a Vikings fan.

I get asked that all the time. What, what, what team are you a fan of? I'm a fan of good stories. I'm a fan of me breaking good stories and getting good interviews.

It's a selfish existence, but it is what it is. It's more so there's a lot of times where, you know, you don't leave right with the masses after a game when you're, you know, I work for NFL network. So after the game, it's usually I'm on the field. I do an interview. I probably go into the locker room unless, unless I have to make a flight, in which case I'm probably making a beeline out of there.

And then I am more so in the crowds. There aren't as many stadiums like there used to be where you actually have to go through the crowd as a media member candlestick park, which yes, I've been doing this long enough that I cover games at candlestick park. You had to, the, the press box was, it was pretty good seat.

It was like up high, it was around maybe the 20, 30 yard line. And in order to get down to the field, remember, this is a retrofitted baseball stadium. You had to go down the stairs past 49ers fans, like all the way from the top, straight through down to the bottom.

And you would have people jumping out. Cause you're the guy in a suit walking through the stands at candlestick park. And I'm just trying to get down there in time to ask Colin Kaepernick one question before I file the story for USA today and hope that he says something interesting, which one specific occasion. That's exactly what I remember happening. It was a clay Matthews. It was the game where it was the 2013 opener Packers, 49ers, which was, they'd had some great battles at that point to the NFC contenders. And there've been a lot of talk back and forth.

Clay Matthews hit Kaepernick way out of bounds. So I run through, run down the stairs, you know, sweating again, wearing a suit. It's like in that press box too, based on where the sun was and they had like a plexiglass front. It was like you were in a microwave, like the sun would come in, the heat would come up. It was so hot in there. So I'm like sprinting, sweaty down the stairs, like we're trying in a 40.

We get it right. Yeah, exactly. So I have some empathy for that. Get into the locker room, which is, I mean, barely a locker room.

It's it's like down a little tunnel. They got a much better set up now at Levi's, but I remember asking him just like, Hey, you know, Clay Matthews hit you out of bounds. You know, what was your reaction? He goes, if intimidation is your plan, I hope you got a better one. I was like, thank you. And I left, I went back and finished writing the story. That's all I needed. Great quote. But now you have, they're much more, you know, most stadiums now have a media entrance and whatnot, but there are still those occasions where you're the one guy in a suit. You're also the one person who's sober. So imagine I'm leaving, you know, I'm at a lot of games.

Yeah. For the Vikings at US Bank Stadium, there's a, there's a parking lot. When I get fortunate, when I have the good spot, Vikings PR takes care of me on that. It's basically right across the street from the stadium, but you have to cross the street where every fan of both teams is also crossing. That's also happens to be the exit of the player's lot. So there's times where you've got the chaos of them trying to get the players out of the lot, people hanging on the fence to talk to the players.

People also simultaneously crying across the street. And I do, I often have that thought in my head of, okay, I'm not looking for a fight here, but if I have to rumble, cause somebody sees me and decides I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make things interesting. I might have to, I might have to do a little something about it.

I have no plan. And that's where Shane Mosley Jr. hopefully is going to, to help us out here. Think about you, Thomas, you're a reporter, right?

You just, you just report on what you see. I don't really hear any negative Tom Pelissero chatter online. I don't know about you, Chris.

I never really hear anybody say that they dislike Tommy P. So I think you're all right. No, but to quote a very famous boxer, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right. And I've never been punched in the face. We could change that today. I'm about to say, I know that Brockman's already thinking like, this sounds like a good bit.

This is a great bit. You're sitting next to a guy with the show logo tattooed on his ass. So maybe even punched on the face, punched in the face on live TV is the natural extension of that. Someone who has been punched in the face. I mean, if you haven't, you're probably better off. I got punched in the face at a Brooks and Dunn concert in Las Vegas. This is true.

Tell them the story. What years did you hear a Brooks and Dunn concert in Las Vegas? This was not that long ago. This was 2019 in Vegas.

Here's what they don't tell you. They have all the great shows. Were they playing off the strip at that point? No, no. This was at Caesars, baby. Reba McEntire. Great. Sarah's great. Good friends with the Kicks Brooks.

One of the Brooks and Dunn guys. So anyway, we went to the show. We had just found out we were expecting and so I was consuming the beverages for everyone that evening.

Well, I thought you were gonna say you had to defend your pregnant wife. No, I was hammered because I had a designated driver. And here's what happened. What they don't tell you, all the great shows and all the great concerts that go on in Vegas, they don't want you to stand and cheer at a concert, which is the most insane thing I've ever seen. And the guy behind me didn't like that I was standing and clapping and getting and singing all the songs. They don't like you to stand?

No, no, no. At least one person in particular. Crowd in Vegas, they're just, they sit and they want to enjoy the show even though it's a concert. I mean I guess Brooks and Dunn are what by 2019? They're like in their late 50s, 60 years old. They're playing the hits though.

Right, but so their crowd is probably on the older... This was an older gentleman who did not like that I was standing and clapping and singing and cheering at a concert. You got beat up by an old guy? I wouldn't say beat up.

I think I got open-hand cheap-shotted. Man, he mushed you. Were you looking at him or was it like from behind he just came around? It was behind and he just came around and got me in the side of the face. Did he have to stand up to do that?

Yeah. Which kind of... Well, then that was really disturbing the person behind him. Like what was going on? The punch is an aggressive move.

It was an aggressive move. Just walk and go tell security like, hey there's a guy standing up. Security's answer to that would probably be, yeah, we're at a concert. I took the high road. I didn't press charges. Just got him kicked out. So then you left the security. Security came over to me because I saw the whole thing happen and they're like, sir, what do you want to do? I'm just like, get him out of here. Did you continue to stand?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It was near the end. The guy literally waited the whole concert to do this. Like he was like building up the courage to hit me. The fact that you got snuffed from the back though, man. That's just like he came over from the blind side.

Like cheap shot. Come on, man. I mean, every one of those, those terrible videos of like people at some sporting event where they end up like in a fistfight almost inevitably the guy in front who turns around to the guy behind him and then the guy on top hits them and then the guy like slumps over and falls down the stairs. That's, that's all those videos.

I do consume those occasionally. Again, I just want to be ready. I want to be ready for whatever might come my way for the next, however many years I've got left on this earth.

So mostly junior, junior, junior fighter. I hope he's not listening to this because he's going to go, who in the world am I about to talk to? Uh, I, I'm fired up.

That's where this began. I fired up for many reasons, including 50 days. We got 50 days till NFL regular 50 season single Terry days football. I'm 50 years old 50. Who are the, who are the number 50 highlights? I always think Ray Berry, old Vikings linebacker number 50. 50 is not a super common superstar number.

That's a great poll by me. 50, not a great, uh, who else was 50? Um, because yesterday obviously Dick Buck is the most famous 51 that we have in sports. Right.

That's not a super long list. Zach Randolph for 50. Uh, we, we've already, we've already skewed.

We've already skewed. David Robinson wore 50. But Corey McGeady wore 50 for the clips.

We're in the, we're in the wrong sport. 50 days to football. Guys, also the Houston Texans officially reporting to training camp as a full squad today. So that's the first team that is truly everybody in camp. We'll have some more teams by the end of the week. Friday, the rest of the bears get there.

This is all set based on when either you're in the hall of fame game or when your regular season opener is. So the Chiefs and the Ravens are two of the early ones. A.J. Hawk wore 50. A.J.

Hawk, that's a solid number 50. K.J. Wright, 50. Justin Houston, 50. Justin Houston, another long time one.

Uh, Rob Ninkovich, three times we're both champions. I'm just gonna keep doing this. We're this close. Yes, we can fill another three hours of this, Brockman.

Uh, we're that close to football. And I gotta say, I caught up this morning on hard knocks with the Giants, which I have seen a number of people making comments on social media, which, of course, is a terrible metric to judge how people really feel about anything that are saying, you know, the Giants are revealing too much. You know, why are they why are they putting themselves out there like this?

And this looks bad. I'm here to tell you. And yes, I'm biased on this because as somebody who works on this side of the industry, I want the good content.

I want the, you know, the most interesting stuff possible. This is, in my opinion, the best behind the scenes football show. If you really want to learn how the NFL works that I've ever seen, I think it's better than certainly the recent years of the hard knocks training camp where, you know, you have to go back to probably the Joe Philbin dolphins to really see guys getting cut on camera and kind of the, you know, the more negative things that a lot of teams just don't want to have that. You know, the Cleveland Browns one with Hugh Jackson, Todd Haley going back and forth in meetings, that one was a more revealing one. But in terms of how NFL teams actually go about building their roster, this is unbelievable access that the Giants have provided. And to the extent that people sit here and go, well, you know, they shouldn't put this out there. Now everybody knows how they value different players.

So what? Everyone they're talking to every agent, the players know everybody in the industry knows what the offers were. Those of us who are insiders or cover the news, we've all got a pretty good idea of what was going on. That's why the insiders, myself, Mike Garofolo, Ian Rapport, Judy Bautista, we're all featured heavily in that episode. It's like, yeah, we're talking about it in real time.

Here's what's going on. What's different here is to actually hear things come out of the mouths of Brian Dabel and Joe Shane and Brandon Brown, John Mara, Kevin Abrams, the whole gang there. I think that it's such a fascinating look and it sheds light on how difficult the job is, particularly around events like free agency. Cause like Joe Shane said in the draft, once you're on the clock, you've got control over everything. Free agency is, you know, the initial wave is like 48 hours of semi-controlled chaos.

And everybody is trying to figure this out. You've got, you know, those, those non-negotiables to, to quote the bear as we've been doing too. And we'll do some of those on a couple more NFL divisions today. You've got those.

All right. That's our drop-off point is six, but then you're like, well, we can get them at seven. Everybody's been there. If you've been in an auction fantasy draft, we have the same thing.

You got your plan for the prices and you're like, I really want that guy though. And these are the real conversations that take place. I mean, the GM is going back and forth over, you know, you're bleeding me for a seventh round pick and a half a second. That's real things that happen. It happens way more than anybody else realizes.

That's a, that's a common type of thing when you're trying to hammer out these types of trades. So I personally commend everybody who greenlighted this stuff being in the show. Cause the, the teams get the final say of what actually makes air. I commend them for going, you know, what, what are we really revealing here? This is, this is not inside the Pentagon. It's not, you know, inside an FBI investigation, it's football.

And if you really want to educate people on how it works and how the job actually takes place, you can't sanitize it. You can't not mention any of the players you didn't get. Now the, what happens on the field is going to dictate how history reflects on the Saquon Barkley decision, which was the most consequential thing on episode three that aired last night. I watched it on my phone on max earlier today, which was because I couldn't figure out how to log in on the computer the entire night.

And my wife couldn't, you know, sign off on the five different two double factor authentication or whatever to prove that I really deserve to be there. But the most interesting thing was just how the Saquon thing played out. Again, it just confirmed what we were saying on TV, which was they, the number it sounded like was going to go too high. They wanted Saquon to go out, find out what the number was and then come back to them. The Eagles ended up making an offer that went way beyond what New York was going to do. And they got a guy in motor Singletary who they'd had in Buffalo, who they thought was a really good player. And so they bring them in. It's not that they think that Singletary is a better player than Saquon or that Saquon couldn't have been important.

Yeah. Two more years and Saquon could have been in the ring of honor, but at what cost to the team, that's the key part of all this. It's not, well, you said Saquon to be a ring of honor player. Why don't you resign them? We already heard Joe Shane say the analytics, the numbers all say 27 year old running backs.

They're a bad investment. They were willing to go as far as they did a year ago on multiple occasions, going all the way back to the bi-week in 2022. They made another run at it in March of 2023 to get Saquon done.

They made another run in July of 2023. Once they tagged Saquon though, in that March, they were never going to offer more money in July because the leverage when you tag a guy at 10 million, it actually goes down for the player. So you get to that point, they would have made an offer if Saquon said, Hey, I want to be there.

If you match this, it didn't really get there. Ed Berry is agent for CAA is a pretty transparent type of guy. You heard him telling Joe Shane, here's what the numbers are.

Here's what it's going to take. It's not a guarantee that you get him if you go there, but this is where we think it's going to land. Now Saquon's an Eagle, either he plays awesome and it's egg on the giant's face, or he doesn't play well. And the giants look like they dodged a bullet either way, revealing the thought process and the conversations. I don't believe has any bearing on ultimately how this is going to be viewed.

I think it's a positive, the more information you can give about things happening in hindsight, the better it is for making sure that people at least understand how you got to the point that you did and the logic that went into it. We'll talk a lot more NFL throughout the course of the show here, we will hit some of those non-negotiables. We'll hit the AFC North and the NFC North, I believe is the plan today. Those are right divisions, did I say that right? AFC North and AFC North, that's right. Let's do it. So I'm struggling to scroll here on my thing. We'll talk some baseball though after this. Major League Baseball All-Star game was last night.

Keith Law joins the show right after this. Passion, drive, and patience. The formula for winning championships is also what keeps your ride or die alive. eBay Motors has everything you need to maintain your vehicle and level it up to peak performance. Superchargers, roof racks, exhaust kits, LED headlights, and more. Whether you're into speed, power, or style, eBay Motors has you covered. With over 122 million parts for your number one ride or die, you'll always find exactly what you're looking for. And with eBay Guaranteed Fit, your part is guaranteed to fit your ride every time or your money back. Because with eBay Motors, you're burning rubber, not cash. With all the parts you need at the prices you want, it's easy to make your car the MVP and bring home huge wins. Keep your ride or die alive at eBayMotors.com.

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One way or another, speeding catches up with you. Paid for by NHTSA. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I'm sitting at the Rich Eisen Show desk, furnished by Grainger with supplies and solutions for every industry.

Grainger has the right product for you. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Major League All-Star weekend or week or whatever we call it is wrapped up All-Star game. Last night, the MLB draft also took place in a somewhat more, I think, public fashion than I recall it in recent years. Nobody covers the Major League draft and the rest of Major League Baseball, like our next guest, senior baseball writer for the athletic Keith Law, kind enough to give us some time. Keith, I know that MLB cut the draft down from 40 rounds to 20 rounds several years ago here.

I was in a prior lifetime, I was the Eau Claire Express beat writer for the Eau Claire leader telegram. And so there'd be some guy drafted like the 39th round and like so calling and trying to get the assistant GM to tell me about something. I remember those days, but this is still, this is an absolutely endless process, especially when you're talking about, in some cases, these 17 year old kids who are eight years away from the Major League. So bring this into the reality of, for people who care about the Major League draft and their baseball teams, what did we see during that draft that's going to matter in the near term, maybe as soon as 2025? Yeah, that's, I mean, there's a perfect answer to that.

Thank you for setting me up so well here. This was an extremely college heavy draft and that's because that's what the class was, right? The high school class this year was not great, but the college class was probably average or a little better than average. And teams, when there's uncertainty in the draft, teams like to go for the college players.

They're closer to the majors. We have years of scouting looks. We have much better data available for the analysts. So there's just a greater degree of certainty anytime you're taking college players. And we set various records, including the first eight picks were college players this year. That's never happened in the 50 year history of the 50, 60, 60 year history of the draft.

I can do math. This was the latest we've ever gone before seeing the first high school guy taken. And I think it's a reflection of all the factors I just said, but from a fan's perspective, it's good in the sense that a lot of these guys will get to the majors faster. We saw it from last year, Paul Skeens, Wyatt Langford, Nolan Chanuel, Jake Bloss, all in the majors from last year's draft. I think this year's draft will be similar.

We have this conversation next July. There'll be a couple of guys already in the big leagues and a few more knocking on the door. So tell me about the number one pick, Travis Bazzana.

I think I've got that pronunciation correctly. Number one to the Guardians. How soon do we see him and why in that type of college heavy draft is he the number one pick? So the most interesting thing about him is that he's Australian and we've never had an Australian go first overall.

Typically, if we get Australians in baseball, they sign as teenagers like players out of the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. But he chose to come to the United States to play at Oregon State for three years and he raped. All he did was hit against some of the best pitching that an amateur can face in the world.

And his performance, coupled with what everyone says is just an amazing work ethic, is why Cleveland made him the number one pick. He was actually second on my personal board behind Georgia outfielder Charlie Condon. But I understand why Cleveland would take Bazzana, because there's a great deal of certainty around his bat.

Everyone I spoke to said that's the best bet to hit. If you're looking at everybody in this draft class, who's the guy you believe, if nothing else, he will hit and he will get to the majors and hit enough to do to be some kind of everyday player and maybe a star. I think that he'll do that, but he'll hit the ground running the moment they send him out, probably to a ball or double A later this summer. He's going to hit. He's going to hit in triple A. We'll see him in the majors at some point next year.

And then who knows? We've seen a lot of very talented players struggle on first exposure to the majors. But I think the attitude now, especially with these college guys is get them there faster. So yeah, they might struggle right out of the chute like Wyatt Langford did, but now he's hitting much better because he's had a couple go rounds.

He's making adjustments. So the sooner you get him there, the sooner they make adjustments, the sooner they become valuable. The other unique thing about the major league draft is you can be drafted multiple times, right? Historically, you can be drafted out of college.

You can get or see me out of high school. You drafted again coming out of JUCO later on in your career. You can be drafted after your senior year. I didn't realize this until I saw a tweet from you right before the draft, but a guy named William Schmidt pulls his name out entirely two hours before the draft. I'm trying to put that in like the context of the NFL draft. Apparently this is a fairly highly ranked player.

Everybody scouts them. How does that take place? How do you get your name out of the draft?

Much less literally the 11th hour. It's, I mean, he was a first round talent. Now first rounders don't, first round talents don't necessarily go in the first round in baseball. You can be drafted quite a bit later and maybe end up with first round money, but not the, not actually be selected in the first round. And what was really unusual about Schmidt's decision, because you can pull, to pull out, all you have to do is let major league baseball know, I do not want to be selected in the draft. And that's it. They'll just take your name out. It used to be much more convoluted, but they made it much simpler for players to say, I'm not interested.

I'm going to college. And that part's fine. The part that I thought was unusual and probably not a great decision by his camp was doing it two hours before the draft.

That really does not look good just from a personal perspective, right? There's a way you conduct yourself in what is essentially a business negotiation. Obviously he and his advisors had been talking to teams. He must've gotten some sense.

He wasn't going to get the money he wanted. You, you don't go to the 11th hour like that and then take your name out. You do it a week, two weeks, a month before we had a player pull his name out, I think a month ago and nobody even blinked. Yep. That's fine. He wants to go to school.

Thanks for letting us know. But by this point, teams have spent so much time talking to him and his people talking about him in draft rooms and not talking about other players. They may end up selecting. So his decision not to pull himself out until the very, very last minute, just because he didn't get what he wanted really doesn't reflect well on him and ends up hurting other players. That to me is the big problem I have with this where there's a way to pull yourself out of the draft. I don't think it's a great decision, but it's fine. That's what you want to do.

You do that. But waiting this long, I think really disrespects the process and the scouts, the individuals who've spent so much time watching you, talking to you, evaluating you to maybe give you, in his case, he probably was going to get $3 million. So last night we have the major league all star game. And I think that if you were summarizing for somebody who didn't watch any baseball the past three months, like what's going on in MLB right now, you had an Otani Homer, you had a Paul Skean start. That's really all you need to kind of define the first half of the baseball season, right?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I was, it's funny when they first talked about, well, should Skean start the all star game? I was like, I don't know.

That's a little odd, right? He just got, he's only been in the majors about 20 minutes and then they did it. And I saw the reaction. I said, yeah, I was wrong.

I was wrong. He's one of the best stories in baseball this year. That's great. If he gets people to turn on the all star game, if he gets people to watch more baseball, I'm here for that.

Obviously it's good for me from a business perspective, but as just a fan of the sport, right? He's amazing. What he's done, the fact that the guy was the number one pick a year ago and goes out and says, I need to add another pitch.

Okay, sure. And he adds another pitch. And by the way, it's the best splitter in baseball this year.

Although he calls it a splinker, but that's amazing. He is a great story. And if he's becoming must see TV, that's fantastic for baseball as a whole and obviously for the Pirates specifically. The Otani effect, I think everybody's aware he's been one of the brightest stars in baseball for a number of years now. Obviously makes the move this past off season over to the Dodgers.

I didn't, I hadn't experienced it firsthand until last weekend. I was out here in LA and went to a couple of Dodgers games and that's a, you know, listen to LA has got a, you know, a little bit of a reputation for people not necessarily wanting to be in their seats, not necessarily arriving early. The amount of attention on every Otani at bat is your, it's like, you're watching for me, for feeling it from having been there, like Mark Maguire in 1998, like that's the type you're not seeing the 700 foot home runs that later we'd find out where, you know, maybe aided by various substances, but you're still seeing every, you think that something major is going to happen.

I also, I mean, I ate sushi at a baseball game for the first time in my life. Like there is, there is an actual impact that has all these different tentacles that certainly for the Dodgers, they're going to make absolutely every dime that they're paying Otani over however many years back to themselves. But it also seems like him in that market on a team that is perennially as good as the Dodgers. It does seem like it's a thing that is a benefit to major league baseball as a whole.

I agree. He's his own economy, right? Remember when the Taylor Swift era's tour was kind of in its at its peak, people were talking about the huge economic impact that she would have on individual cities and what was the GDP produced by the Taylor Swift tour.

And I mean, obviously it feels ridiculous, but it's not wrong. There is a huge economic impact to, you know, a tour, a concert tour of that size or to Otani coming to your club, coming to your town. He absolutely changes the calculus for the Dodgers.

Now there's paying a lot of money for that, for that privilege also. So he's well compensated in addition, but he is, it is a traveling road show, right? Where people are going to show up. I mean, when he was with the Angels last year and he came to the Phillies, obviously the Phillies draw well anyway, but I happened to go to one of those games just with some friends and you could see the difference, the degree to which people were paying attention. These are Phillies fans. People are paying attention to his at bats, seeing Otani jerseys.

So you're seeing the opposite teams jerseys in the stands, which one does not typically do in Philadelphia, if one values one's personal safety. But people were, people were very into it and very excited to see him. Obviously very excited to see Phillies get him out a couple of times, but he is a phenomenon that he's great. I mean, obviously he's the likes of which we'd never seen, but he is absolutely great for the sport. I mean, I am a big fan of the players who are outliers like that.

And we, you know, I, I was wrong on Otani. If you go back to what I originally wrote, I thought he was going to have a lot of trouble making consistent contact with the way he swung the bat in Japan. He made adjustments to become the player he is now because he's a unicorn. He's a superstar.

He has absolutely three standard deviations above the mean. And that's awesome. We love players like that. They make the sport more exciting. Is it strange at all to you that the, the gambling scandal that erupted around Otani back in spring training, it's not even a topic.

It doesn't seem to come up. Baseball's had some of the biggest gambling scandals in all of sports going back over a hundred years ago. And this has to be the nightmare for every major sport for the NFL, for the NBA, which banned a player for life, major league baseball. This has to be at the forefront, especially because baseball players, let's be honest, they probably have more time on their hands than you do in a lot of other sports. There's a lot of times sitting around a clubhouse on your phone and maybe having a nap, you're not supposed to have at a league level or just from people within baseball that you talk to, not specifically on Otani because now we have at least an explanation about the translator, and there's been an indictment for the money stealing and all that, but is the idea of that being able to happen a concern for baseball as a whole with the inevitability that somebody's probably going to slip up? I mean, we did, we saw a player get banned for life. Was that a month ago to Peter Marcano, who was a decent prospect? He's played a little bit in the big leagues. He won't be the last. I know a lot of people say, well, this is what happens when baseball gets in bed with all of these casinos and gambling entities.

I don't think that's quite right. It's just the gambling is so pervasive now in the culture, right? It is very hard to follow any sport and not be inundated with gambling content, gambling advertising. It is just more accessible than ever. And obviously for a lot of people, it becomes a legitimate problem.

And so there's quite a bit of research into kind of the neuroscience behind why people get addicted and why they just keep coming back even when they know it's wrong, even when they know it can put their entire career at risk. So to me, it's much more about that than sports, individual sports leagues, cozying up to the gambling entities, which of course they're going to do. It's free money for them, essentially. Why would they not do so?

And I don't know that there's an easy solution. I think baseball is going to have to hope that their relationships with these gambling entities continue to pay off where they get tips because it's essentially what keeps happening is someone from the gambling side says, hey, we're seeing unusual activity or we think this player is involved in something. That's generally how these guys are getting busted. And it's never going to be good for the sport. And Major League Baseball just has to keep trying to lean on the enforcement side because I don't think there's any such thing as prevention.

The best, the best education, in my opinion, for all athletes, every sport that they can possibly get. And if I were one of these leagues putting together the policies and whatnot, I would just hammer home. If you place a bet and your name is on it, if you download the app, if you register an account, the casinos are required by law to report it. Like you are going to get busted. It is a 100% fail rate.

You have to stay a million miles away from it. You also covered the futures game out there during the All-Star week festivities. What, if anything, jumped out at you about that next generation? Some of the guys we could hear from sooner than later. There's a lot of good pitching out there.

I don't know how quick it'll get there. And obviously we hope these guys all stay healthy, but it was very dominated by pitching. There was a 19-year-old Noble Meyer from the Marlins. He was one of the best pitchers of the day. Noah Schultz, who's a 6'9 lefty with the White Sox. He gets compared quite a bit to Randy Johnson. And it's not that ridiculous, actually.

It is lower slot. He's up to 99. Slider is really tough to hit. That has got to be a very uncomfortable at bat for hitters, especially left-handed hitters. So there's quite a bit of talent coming. The hitters were a little overshadowed because a lot of these pitchers show up. They're only going to work one inning, so just air it out.

So we saw a lot of big velocities. But I was very happy to see Cam Collier, Red's prospect. If you remember Lou Collier, who played a little bit for the Pirates and I think the Expos. This is his son.

Looks nothing like him. Cam is a big, strong kid with a lot of power. He had one of the two homers of the day, ended up winning the MVP award. And I do think he's going to end up being an impact bat somewhere for the Reds in the next couple of years. So there's lots of talent coming. It's just the futures game is hard because everybody has, there's just so much velocity out there right now. I feel bad for hitters trying to just get that one hit, that one at-bat they get in the futures game. So the second half of the baseball season kicks off on Friday. In your mind, as we zoom out here beyond Otani, beyond Paul Skeeth, what are the biggest storylines, especially over these next couple of weeks, even leading up to the trade deadline? I think you've got a lot of teams that have stuff to do, especially approaching the trade deadline. And maybe if they don't do enough at the trade deadline, right?

What does the second half look like for them? Yankees, Orioles, Atlanta, the Dodgers. I mean, these are teams that are all expecting to go to the playoffs. They probably will all end up in the playoffs, but I think all have flaws, all have things they absolutely need to address.

And in some cases, it's more about getting healthy. You could argue the Dodgers are just waiting for guys to come back from injury, but can you wait for that? Or do you pass up opportunities to get better at the trade deadline? So I think it's going to be very, especially these next, what are we, 13 days from the trade deadline. It's going to be very interesting to see how active some of these clubs are. Do you rest on your laurels and say, we've got a huge lead in the division or the wildcard race, especially in the NL where almost every team seems to be at 500? Or do you go after it?

Do you go get aggressive and get one of the three or four impact guys who are available in the market this year to try to get better, not just for the rest of the season, but to try to have more of an impact in October. You can read them at The Athletic, one of the absolute best. Keith Law, thanks a lot for the time, man. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. All right. We'll talk a little more baseball later on the show. We'll talk some more football after the, after this break as well. We've got, we're going to go back to The Helmet. The Helmet O Questions, a few that we did not get to yesterday. I'm answering anything from the guys in studio, anything they want to know, NFL or otherwise. We're going to draw some of those out. We'll get you some answers.

The big storylines, 50 days out from the regular season. That's next, on the Rich Eisen Show. Rich Eisen here for Sleep Number. They say opposites attract, and that's why the Sleep Number Smart Bed is the best bed for couples.

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Let's go! Game time dot co dot rich slash rich. Use the code rich for $20 off your purchase. Download game time app. Create an account.

Use the code rich. You get $20 off to go to baseball this weekend. I think that's a great idea, Tom. Are you going to be in LA still, Tom? This weekend? Yeah. I will be heading out on a late night flight tonight.

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Use the code rich. R I C H. $20 off your purchase. Download the game time app. Last minute tickets. Lowest price. Guaranteed. Boom! Wait, what do you mean you're going to be on a flight tonight? Friday night.

Okay. Late night flight Friday night. You said tonight. I got two more days here.

That's what I'm saying. Are you leaving earlier? I forgot I just bailed. I've had enough. We're an hour into the second show of the week. I think I'm done.

I was like, oh no. 844-204 Rich. The phone lines. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri coach can join us at the top of the hour. Let's grab a couple calls real quick here before we get to the hat of magic. How about Nick in South Carolina? Nick, it's Tom. What's up? Tommy P. How you doing, brother? I'm doing great, man. How are you? What's going on? I'm doing well. So last week I called in and had my Dolphins going undefeated and beating the Cowboys in the Super Bowl.

But you are the perfect person to answer my question. Man, what is going on with Tua's contract? I think that the short version, Nick, and then thank for the call, is that Tua wants to be paid in the same range that any quarterback who's coming up on a new deal would want to in the current environment. You had Joe Burrow sitting there at 55.

You have Trevor Lawrence, who some thought was going to get above Burrow, ends up also getting 55. The number for Tua has always going to be somewhere in that range. The question is, is it 53?

Is it 57? For Tua, is he willing to walk away from the Dolphins' best offer, whatever that might be, before they report to training camp, which I believe is six days away. At that point, you're putting yourself in a position where you're going down the franchise tag road potentially after this season.

You're removing some of the security that you have. It's a negotiation. It's been ongoing talks. I know his agent was out there in Miami back in the spring. I really believed that the deal was going to be done by now, but when you're talking about contracts, they're going to eat up 20 plus percent of your salary cap.

Those are the ones that sometimes require a little bit of time. Based on what I'm aware that the Dolphins have already been willing to present to Tua, I don't think it's a matter of whether they're willing to make a commitment to Tua. It's a matter of keeping their cap healthy for all the other business.

They've already gotten done with stuff like Jalen Waddell's new contract and some of the deals they're going to have to do in the future, which of course includes another wide receiver who might want a new contract before they start a training camp. How about Eric in Banger, Maine? Eric, it's Tom. What's up? Oh wow, hey. Yeah, hey. So, I'd like to be talking to all of you. Tom, you're my favorite guest, with regards to Susie, you're my favorite guest, and I appreciate that. Consider this gig in the future.

Thank you, sir. What's going on? Yeah, so my question is, I started thinking about this several months ago, but now that Colorado is back in the limelight, I'm thinking about when the draft happens, and then of course there's all these undrafted free agents, and all the people are calling, hey, we want you, we want you, we want you. What is keeping someone like a Chador Sanders or someone else from challenging the draft and saying, hey, I'm a Giants fan, I'm originally from New Jersey, and I watched as Eli did his machinations with his dad, but what's stopping someone from saying, you know what, I'm not going to declare for the draft, I'm just going to become an unemployed person and maybe somebody will pick me up.

So, it's a good question. The eligibility rules, the way that it works in short, and I appreciate the call, Eric, is that you have, players become automatically eligible when they complete their college eligibility. That obviously became complicated in COVID when everybody got the extra year, so next year's draft is actually going to be massive, the number of players in it, and potentially you're going to have better players who end up being undrafted. But the bottom line is, in order to declare early, you need to file something with the lead, that deadline's usually in late January, and say, I want to be in the draft. In recent years, the guys who got the extra COVID year, they were automatically in the draft unless they said, I'm out.

But now that we're getting to the end of those extra COVID year guys, now it comes down to, for Shidoor Sanders, who is, he'll have three years out of high school, so he'll be eligible to go into the 2025 draft, he would have to declare. If he doesn't declare, he's not able to be signed. That's the easiest way to explain it is, if you don't, you have to be eligible for the draft once before you can sign with any team. That's why there's some international players who were in the draft this past year, because you have to at some point be eligible to be drafted. So if you really wanted to, beyond, you know, filing a lawsuit, challenging the collective bargaining agreement, things like that, the only way that you could effectively keep yourself from getting drafted would be if you had something going on like Lyle Collins a number of years ago, where if you remember, there was something that happened, a serious legal situation taking place off the field, an ex-girlfriend of his who had died, and there was, there were some, you know, questions about, you know, he was questioned as part of the investigation, he wasn't a focus of it, but in essence, he was a, you know, potential first round type player who teams were essentially told by his agent at the time, Derek Gilmore was one of them, like, listen, if he doesn't, if you're not gonna take him in the first round, don't take him, he's not going to sign, he'll just wait a year and go back into the draft next year. Somebody still could have drafted him and made a bet like, hey, this guy's gonna sign, but sure enough, nobody did draft him, he goes undrafted, he's able to sign a three-year deal with the Cowboys instead of the standard four-year contract, become eligible for free agency a year early, but that involved literally someone dying to set off that chain of events. If, and I know Dion has talked about this, like, hey, I'm only gonna let my kid go to certain places, I think he's mentioned the Cowboys, right, that's one of the teams that he would allow Shandoor to go to, you would in essence have to say, he's willing to not play for an entire year, if you draft him and it's not a place that he wants to go to.

And you go down a slippery slope when you start saying those types of things, because then it reflects on the player and some teams might look at this and go, I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is a guy that we feel comfortable bringing in. So is it possible? Yes, but you can't simply say, I'm not gonna declare for the draft. You're automatically eligible once your eligibility is exhausted and you're not eligible until you're in the draft one time.

You'd have to find some way to manipulate things and make yourself slide through. It seems like every 10 years or so, though, there's the conversation starts that, oh, this guy could challenge the way the draft is done forever. You know, Caleb Williams, that was the name that was, and listen, Caleb could have done it. Yeah, you could.

Doesn't happen. The way, the other way that you would do this, and this is another thing, would be, remember, Caleb only took a physical with one team, the Bears. What if he said, I'm not gonna take a physical with the Bears? I'm only gonna take a physical with the pull name out from the last call, the Dolphins.

I'm only gonna give a physical to the Dolphins. Do you draft a player that you have no medical on whatsoever? Because the moment that he didn't take a physical at the combine, people started saying, well, what's he hiding? People in the NFL were like, well, what's he hiding?

The answer is he wasn't hiding anything. He just didn't think I need to give 32 teams my medical records, which is, I mean, intellectually, that's a fair thing. There's also only so many players. If you're a fourth round pick and you go, I'm only gonna give my medical to one team, everyone's gonna be like, yeah, have fun in the seventh round, right? But if you're going to be a top five guy, it's not a bad strategy. It's what the NBA players do. There hasn't been a top five, I want to say the last number one pick, somebody told me, so this might be totally inaccurate, but I was told the last number one pick who did not, or who did give full medical, like at the NBA combine, was John Wall. That's how long it's been.

So that's pretty common in the NBA. This is the first time in the NFL, but again, you're on a pretty short list of your Caleb Williams, in terms of who you can get away with. We got one more minute. I promised a question from the fishbowl.

Let's do it here. Comment of questions. If the Jets knew about Aaron Rogers' plans to go to Egypt the whole time, why did Sola Flex was saying it was an excuse? Because it is unexcused. Because there's two types of absences under the collective bargaining agreement. There's you're excused and we're not finding you, or there's unexcused.

If you allow Rogers, listen, could you handle things differently at the podium? You can make arguments on that. But in the end, if a guy doesn't show up for the one mandatory thing, just because he's going on a trip, this isn't childbirth, this isn't death in the family, this is I'm going on vacation. If you don't find him, the next time you do find somebody, number one, somebody might be able to challenge that and file a grievance over it.

Number two, it just sends that message that, well, the mandatory stuff isn't really mandatory at all. Again, could they have handled things differently? Sure. And we've yet to have a substantive long interview with Aaron Rogers. It'll be fascinating to see the first time that he goes to the podium in training camp, which is about a week away, exactly how Rogers and the media handle the big storyline from back in June. We know what he's going to do, right? I mean, I don't, I would never say I I've known as much as anybody knows Aaron Rogers, right? I've known Aaron Rogers since 2007, which was my first year on the Packers beat at the Green Bay press. Cause I don't perceive has to be close with them or friends with them, but I've spent enough time around him. And he is, he is a very interesting guy who I think it's fair to say is somewhat unpredictable. Sure. You can sit there and say, well, he's gonna not take anybody. I don't know. I don't know what he's going to do.

I mean, you easily can sit back and go. He was at all the non-mandatory stuff. If he missed the week before to go to Egypt and then came back for the mandatory mini camp, it's not a story. So does the week actually matter? The only thing I would say is for a guy who came out publicly after last season and talked about anything that doesn't have to do with when he has to get out of the building, we don't need the distractions.

You create the literal definition of a distraction. When not only do you take the trip, who cares about where he was. It's about he made his head coach and his teammates answer for him and speak for him for those two days, 31 teams got to take their off season victory lap. One team had to talk about some guy who wasn't there. It seemed like everyone knew about this though. And everyone was cool with it. So why did Saul go out of his way to point out that it was unexcused? Was it excused or not? You could literally just not answer.

Bill Belichick did it for 20 years. You could just not answer the question. Saul is pretty upfront on a lot of stuff.

And so if he said, I'm not going to comment on that, that might raise more questions than is worth it. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri head coach. We'll talk about this more later.

Drinkwitz joins us next on the Rich Eisen Show. This radio commercial was made to convince you to stop speeding. We can't use siren sound effects on the radio. So we'll use other equally jarring sound effects to get your attention. Like telling you that whether you drive a little over the speed limit or a lot, you can crash just the same. You could hurt yourself or worse others. And the damage you cause will be beyond repair. See, we didn't have to use crash or siren sounds after all. Speeding catches up with you. Brought to you by NHTSA.